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NVIDIA is a leader in the manufacture of graphics processors and computer chips for personal computers and game consoles. Speaking to 1,200 experts at the SIGGRAPH Conference in Vancouver, Canada in August 2018, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang announced a fundamental improvement in computer graphics. NVIDIA was the first company to sell a graphics processor for what is known as ray tracing, a computing process that renders virtual worlds in a photorealistic quality. NVIDIA has realized a vision that Saarbrücken computer scientists had already described in a research paper and presented at a conference in 2005.

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16.07.18

Ländercheck Informatik: Saarland Informatics Campus triumphs

The "Ländercheck Informatik", published by the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft (Donors' Association for the Promotion of Humanities and Sciences in Germany) in May 2018, is based on official data and highlights the differences in university computer science education between the federal states of Germany. The Saarland is named as a winner in the survey because it scores top marks in almost all categories. Manfred Schmitt, President of Saarland University, congratulated the current dean and his predecessors on this success.

"Informatics as a universal science has an ever greater importance in our lives," says the report, which the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft published this May together with the Heinz Nixdorf Foundation. The authors, Matthias Winde and Eike Schröder, describe the extent to which universities in the German federal states train computer scientists, and what educational offerings and how much staff they provide for this purpose.

Already on the second page, Winde and Schröder proclaim the Saarland and Saxony as winners in the rankings. For the Saarland their reasoning in brief is "many graduates, many international students". For a detailed explanation, the study is broken down into individual building blocks, which, according to the authors, constitute a computer science education.

In the category "students", the federal states Saarland and Schleswig-Holstein gain top marks. "Both states have responded to an increasing demand for IT professionals and have developed positively in recent years," the authors report. Regarding Saarland, they particularly emphasize the high proportion of international students: almost a third of the computer science students come from abroad. "In addition to the geographical border location, this could be due to the strong reputation of the IT department at Saarland University and the computer science research environment," explain the authors. They also note that in no other federal state do more students pass computer science examinations. With 7.4 percent, Saarland leads in the category "proportion of passed examinations in the Computer Science Department relative to all passed examinations in 2016". The national average is 5.1 percent.

Furthermore, the Saarland scores points in the category "personnel", since the proportion of computer science experts among scientific staff in the Saarland is 7 percent. Only the city-state of Bremen has a higher share with 7.2 percent.

However, there are also weak spots in Saarland. The authors state: "There is some catching up to do in recruiting women." It also takes too long for a new computer science job to be manned in Saarland. The average is 93 days; in Saarland it takes 193 days. In no other state does it take longer.

The data or the study was provided by the official statistics and the Higher Education Compass of the German Rectors' Conference for the period from 2011 up to the winter semester 2016/17.